When I looked on that mixed body of communicants, and observed the earnestness, the seriousness, and the apparently deep devotion with which they gathered round the Table of their Lord; and when after the service was over I saw them pressing round their beloved Vicar, and many of them reaching out their rough hands once more to grasp his with a true, hearty, loving grasp, and heard them wishing him a blessing, I could not help giving thanks to the God of all grace who gave that day such a testimony to the faithful reaching of His Gospel. For what were the means employed for the attainment of such a result? Not music, not form, not the claim to priestly power, but the plain, simple, loving ministry of the Gospel of the grace of God. Between three and four years my dear friend had been preaching the great doctrines of Scripture—such as conversion to God, justification by faith, free forgiveness through the finished atonement, and, new life by the power of the Holy Ghost—and God had blessed that ministry to the ingathering of a people to His name. This was the work of which we that day witnessed the fruit, and I trust the effects on all of us who witnessed it may be that we may work on in our various spheres of labour more than ever resolved, by God’s help, to stick fast to great principles, and more than ever encouraged to trust His promises, and look out for great results.
E. H.
Tunbridge Wells,
August 29th, 1877.
A SERMON.
‘Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me.’—Acts, i. 8.
It is said of the saints of God in the Old Testament, that ‘out of weakness they were made strong,’ and none of us who are called to God’s ministry can think for one moment of our work and our weakness without the deepest sense of our own need of that same gift. We have a work of infinite importance. We are called to be God’s instruments in making known that which God has wrought at no less a price than the most precious blood of His well-beloved Son. We have to encounter the threefold antagonism of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and we ourselves are poor weak creatures, so weak that we are quite unable to stand alone, and so utterly fallen that we cannot preserve ourselves even for an hour. It follows, therefore, that we all stand in need of power from God. And whatever be our position, whether in the ministry or out of it, whether laymen, deacons, presbyters, or bishops, we all require to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. If ever the need of this strength was felt it must be felt now, now that we are passing through the perilous times of the latter days; and if there be any office in the whole world which appears to require it more than another, it is the sacred office to which my dear friend is this day admitted, the holy office of a Bishop in the Church of God.
But, thanks to God! there is provision made in the Gospel for weakness as well as for sin; and the result is, that the promise of power was almost the last promise made by our blessed Lord before He left us, so that just before His ascension He said, ‘Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you; and ye shall be witnesses unto Me.’ Now the Holy Ghost came on the Church at Pentecost, and as there has never been said one word about His being withdrawn, we are warranted in looking for that power now, and in spreading out our weakness before His throne, in full assurance that according to His promise He Himself will give power for His work. Let us study, then, two points—1st, the purpose, and 2ndly, the source of the power; and while we study, may we by God’s great grace be permitted to experience the gift!
I. The purpose: ‘Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.’ It in clear, therefore, that the power is a power of testimony, and that its great object is to enable us to be witnesses unto the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are not, therefore, judges. The witness is never the judge. His business is to bear testimony as to what he has seen and heard. But he has nothing to do with the sentence. That rests with the judge alone. So the witness for Christ is not the judge over his follow-men. He cannot sit in the Confessional and pronounce the sentence of life and death. That rests with the Lord Himself, and there must be no usurpation of His sovereign right.
Then, again, the witness is not a medium, or connecting link, between the soul and the Saviour. He is not like a telegraph wire through which the electric current is conveyed from one point to another, for in God’s salvation there is nothing intermediate between the Saviour and the sinner. There is no such thing in Scripture as the idea that the grace of God passes from the Lord Jesus through any men or body of men to the sinner. All that is human imagination, pure and simple. The witness is not a conductor or communicator, not a channel or a medium. His business is to bear such a testimony to the Lord Jesus Christ as shall bring the soul face to face with Him, and introduce the sinner into direct communication with God Himself.